Reality
by Hideout Writer
Summary: What you see and what really is are two different things. The ugly fiction is still prettier than the reality of the situation.
1. Chapter 1

"Grow up."

"Get a life!"

"You're immature."

"You're so lame, you know that?"

"Get a clue!"

"Have you any idea of how lame and immature you are?"

As a matter of fact, yes, I am aware of those things. Unfortunately, there's no magic button to push, no special shrine I can go to, or creepy guru somewhere that can 'show me the way'. No one really can, because life isn't a matter of do 'a,b,c, and get results d,e,f'. Not when it comes to questions of maturity.

I'm well aware that my masks are of terrible quality. I know that when you meet me, you _will_ see that line where the mask tries to hide the sad, sorry state beneath. Everyone I meet wants to get to know me, simply because they want to see beneath the mask. But please, believe me when I say you don't want to see beneath the mask. It doesn't look good with the mask, but the picture beneath the mask is far worse. I'd prefer it if all you saw was the naïve, sad young man who is laughing a bit too much as he uncertainly stumbles through his life, trying to keep everything in some semblance of order.

Under that mask is a little boy on a cold winter's night, shivering as he tries to warm himself by the dying embers of the fire of emotion. All that remains are the pale and dying embers of anger, fear, and confusion. Happiness, hope, joy…nearly everything else in the emotional spectrum has burnt out long ago.

You see my lack of desire to try new flavors of ice cream, and you think that's the problem, but really, it's hard to care, when the little boy inside is shivering beside the smoking embers of fear and confusion. You see my blind obsession with _Star Trek_, but you don't see that child, carefully trying to get the fire to come back to life. You see the way I'm so invested in it that sometimes, I'm more present on the bridge of the _Enterprise_ than I am in the present day. You see me tapping on walls, speaking to myself, or making odd gestures in thin air, and you wonder if I've lost my mind. You don't see that I'm busier trying to save it.

You hear me making incessant jokes, and you wish that I'd grow up and get serious, but you never see that my smile never quite reaches my eyes, and fades far too fast. You don't see the child within, frantically piling on small piles of flammable debris, then hitting the ground by the fire so fast that the skin of his knees breaks from hitting the rocks so he can blow at the base, heedless of the pain.

You want so desperately to help me, get me to open up, and experience new things, and most of all, you want me to remove that mask. Unfortunately, when I do, your reaction will always be the same. You will come to the immediate realization that 'he's too damaged, there's nothing I can do to help him, he's past saving'. Then, without a glance back towards the pitiful weakness you see written inside, you will turn, and walk away.

You want to be with the beautiful people. You want to help the people with little problems, like not being willing to try new ice cream flavors. You want a charity case that isn't _too_ damaged, just a tiny scratch in the side, near the bottom, where someone won't really notice anyway. You can't really stand seeing the burnt-out shell of something that may have been human, many years ago. You can't stomach seeing so much psychological damage, so you'll go fix someone else, someone who's damage is easily repairable with a small bottle of White-Out. And you won't look back. You will try to forget what you saw. You will move on.

Me? I'll still be here, trying to survive in the real world whilst trying to repair the damage within. Perhaps I'll succeed in keeping that fire from dying completely, or perhaps I'll die within myself. Perhaps I will outwardly succeed, maybe I'll crash and burn. One thing is for certain. I _will_ put one foot in front of the other, and repeat the process until my inevitable success or failure, at which point, I shall choose a new direction. Still, the question bears asking: Would I truly be missed if I failed in my mission to survive? Would anyone miss me if I suddenly imploded in the middle of nowhere, a single corpse halfway down a snowy mountain, preceded in death by the soul it once housed?


	2. Hope

"Grow up."

"Get a life!"

"You're immature."

"You're so lame, you know that?"

"Get a clue!"

"Have you any idea how lame and immature you are?"

So you think to return, ghosts of my past? You have no power here. But, as you have taken the time out your _assuredly_ busy schedule to resurface in my mind, know this: I have grown up. I'm not exactly where I'd like to be yet, but I'm _getting there_. I've made _progress!_ You want me to get a life? I have, and while it's still cool and pale, compared to your warm and vibrant displays, it's _mine_, and nothing you say or do can change that. This is _my_ life, and you don't have the right, let alone the power to ruin it for me again.

I'm lame, you say. Perhaps to _your_ standard of existence, but get this fact through your thick skulls: _I_ live _my_ life, and you can't tell me that my simple preferences are wrong or bad simply because they aren't the choices you would make. So long as I operate within the law, you've got bupkis, and I'll no longer tolerate your pollution of my mind. After all, what's yours is yours, and what's mine…well, that's _mine_, and you can't steal it from me anymore! In spite of my wishlists and spending habits, I truly am content with my position in life.

And now, the third accusation, that of my supposed immaturity. You think you are more mature? I live my life. I don't complain about what you do, so long as you aren't adversely affecting me. Yet…you do not the extend same courtesy to me. What does that say of our relative maturities? Perhaps I am still mentally immature. No, I suppose I should own up to this one. Yes, I _am_ immature. I'm still something of a naive idealist at heart. I seek beauty, and your supposed maturity shown nothing of what I seek.

So…while the colors of my world were once grey, now I see that the lack of color was just the simple result of the sun not yet having risen. It still hasn't. But there's more light now. I can now see the suggestions of colors. Hope blooms anew, as I realize that all is not lost.

I allowed you access, when you were not the mere ghosts you are today. I allowed you to drive me to a state in which I very nearly destroyed my own sanity in a firestorm of anger, simply because I thought it could protect me from the very thing I was allowing. The hatred is not the path for me. I will not be the person who will destroy everything, friend and foe alike, because unlike that person, I will no longer allow myself to be driven to madness. So, ghosts of my past, give me the keys. You aren't allowed to drive anymore, and this is not a road I want to be on.

I'll have none of your ugliness, your supposed maturity as you destroy anything that doesn't look exactly like you. I'll not be party to this tragedy, as you burn down the world around you. I seek beauty. I seek the things, however fleeting, that bring a smile to my heart. No longer am I a little boy, desperately trying to restart a dead fire. Perhaps it's just a little blaze now, only just enough to take the edge off of a winter night's chill. I don't think I'll need a huge fire. Summer is coming, and the sun is rising.

While my estimation of your maturity is very low, I feel I must still at least ask. Seek beauty. Stop the senseless ugliness. I'm no Earth worshipper; I can find beauty in buildings, roads, trucks, and ships just as easily as I can find the beauty of trees and flowers and pristine mountains and sunsets that are a riot of color in the evening sky. I find no beauty in death and decay and the destruction of the innocent and beautiful, especially when you have no purpose behind it. You create ugliness for ugliness' sake, then wonder why the world you live in is so crazy. If your actions are the mark of maturity, I want nothing to do with it, because it would seem that your maturity revels in destruction and ugliness.

Still, the question bears asking: What if you were wrong? What if your accusations weren't meant for me at all, but were actually your own problems coming to the surface?


	3. Alone

Alone. It's such a small word, merely five letters. Hardly enough space to convey the breadth, depth, and emotionally devastating impact of the word.

I used to kid myself. I used to say that I didn't need anyone. As it happens, that's not the truth. The truth is, I don't need a lot of people, but those few that I do need…they are an absolute necessity to me. Do they need me?

I wander, cast adrift by the whims of fate and the consequences of my own actions. How could I have known that my inadequacy…my inability…my impotence more than ten years prior would destroy me now? Would I have been able to prevent that failure, if I had known? Would that knowledge, kept in the forefront of my awareness, have ensured success? I doubt it. And, even if it had, what gain would there truly be? Could I have been on a different path, or would fate and circumstance still have conspired to bring me to this place, regardless?

I wonder, do they think of me? Am I in their thoughts, but circumstance stands between us as a vast and unknowable sentinel? Or am I simply forgotten, discarded like a child's broken toy?

My mind screams in the silence as I contemplate the void. Unbidden and unwelcome, the old ghosts of my past rise around me, and within the recesses of my thoughts I scream in fear and aggravation. Am I doomed to forever vanquish these pale spectres of my past, only to watch in agonized horror as they rise, yet again? Why do they chase me so? Why can I never gain a moment's peace from them? I can be free of them, for a time, but I need my friends to achieve that peace. The noise of the living drowns out the stale hatred and resentment of a past long dead; a past that should have been long forgotten. And if I cannot have my friends, then to have something to do would fill that yawning silence. To have a function, a purpose…that silences those old voices.

I am denied both, and I sit here, motionless, silently shrieking my defiance into the void. There are so many wrongs… So much have I done, things I am ashamed of in aeternal review before me. So much has been done to me, taunting faces, words and deeds. Actions to cause pain. Why can I not suppress those voices which do not come from my own actions? Am I responsible for those as well? Have I caused it, indirectly? Did others bring me pain at my invitation? How could I have invited this? Perhaps my subconscious has betrayed me, signaled beyond my understanding that I desired this.

I would flee this torment, escape into the music I so enjoy, and drown my cares in the intoxicating froth of my imagination, but the music doesn't catch upon my soul as it used to. The intoxicants brewed by my imagination are as water, and the illusion falls, flailing strangely as the mind that generated it also rejects it.

I would flee this torment, check out in front of a brightly lit screen, and watch others relate their tales through pretended word and deed. They do not engage. I am not the audience these tales were made for, and I am unable to remain interested in them. Somehow, I feel as though I have debased myself for trying.

I would silence these old voices, but I have not the skill. I would flee these old voices, but I carry them with me, everywhere I go. How can I hide…from myself? I would reject them, eject them, but I fear I cannot. To cut away something that feels as though it is your own flesh is difficult enough, but to cut into your own mind is an entirely different discussion. If I do not…what will become of me? What madness will leak through, if I am left unattended? What will I become, if left to fester long enough?

I hope never to find out.


	4. Peace

Peace

I am overwhelmed by a feeling that suffuses me, wrapping around me like a blanket of the softest down. I am safe and quietly happy. Traces and hints of a smile dance around my face, an upward tug of the lips here, a crinkling of the eyes there. I share this space with few in these evening hours, as the sun's final rays caress the land with long fingers in shadow.

I am not interacting with my circle of friends, but I am in motion. Glorious and free, I effortlessly run at top speed across the hills and through the valleys. The old ghosts lay silent, not daring to disturb the forces at work in this particular Moment.

The music in my collection brushes against my soul as thundercloud billow forth into an imposing purple amphitheater. Lightning charges in the distance, jagged pillars of light that connect ground to sky. Vaporous clouds of whimsy fall about my soul like chilled air from a freezer as the clouds overhead are illuminated from within in brilliant flashes.

A minute feels like an hour; an hour feels like a minute as I charge onward to my destination. Buildings appear infrequently at first, but with increasing regularity as I continue my journey. I slow down as more people use the same path as I. Ordinarily, I would be upset, raging at the idiocy that is humanity in a pack. The forces of this Moment prevent my ire before it can be stirred.

My eyes see, and my hands and feet react accordingly, but I'm not truly present. I'm here, and a million miles away at the same time; thinking of nothing and everything. I come to a stop, aware of the need to refuel. The summer evening is warm, and as I depart my air-conditioned environment, it wraps around me as tenderly as a mother's hug. I am surprised by the lack of humidity.

Overhead, the sky flashes, filled with something I once feared, but tonight there is no fear. No anger. No despair and regret. I am at peace, and as I settle for the night's rest, I am content.


	5. Destructive Musing

"_Careless, realism costs souls,"_ ~Nightwish, 'Song of Myself'.

"_Hello darkness my old friend…"_

What have I done?

"_I've come to talk with you again…"_

Words, once spoken, can never be unspoken. Truth is as dangerous as a lie, for while it can set you free as said in the Book, improperly invoked, truth can just as easily destroy. Lives, careers, relationships. To carelessly utter the truth is as irresponsible as drinking and driving.

"_Because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping…"_

The world is not what it once was. There is no longer a place for the stark and cold harsh light of logic and reason. To burn with righteous indignation, to react…somehow in a manner that shows to everyone around you that you carry righteous anger in your chest…that is what is valued now.

I have no place here. A mind like mine, splintered and fragmented, does not belong here. I sought to protect myself from the demons of my past, when they were the demons of my present, tormentors with faces and names now deliberately forgotten. The irony is that I've done more damage to myself than I ever suffered at the hands of my would-be tormentors. I sought to escape reality, but reality is not to be escaped lightly, nor easily. My sanity was the price paid (gladly, at the time) to cross that boundary betwixt that which is generally agreed to be real and that which is not. Had I only escaped reality once or twice, the damage might not have been permanent.

"_And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence."_

I did not escape once or twice. I destroyed my own sanity in a bargain to escape reality at any time, in any place. In my haste to protect myself, and in the ignorance of youth, I warped my mind in a way that my tormentors could never have achieved on their own. Someone trained in the mysterious maladies of the mind might say I register in the autistic spectrum. Some have said I have ADHD. The words they use suggest a mind incapable of operating in the world around it.

They would suggest a level of incompetence brought on by a mental condition, but they would never actually reach the root cause. They could never see the true damage, and even if they could, how does one heal the soul? Ritalin may focus the mind, but I doubt it does anything for the soul.

In truth, I do not believe I have ruined my mind, but rather, I believe that I have shredded my soul. The emotional spectrum is distant. I far prefer dealing with fact, even if it is usually fictional facts. Facts don't lie. (though fictional facts are often retconned) If my data is incorrect, then it is simply a matter of acquiring the corrected data, and updating the memory banks.

I often depart for fictional shores, lost within my own mind, so I can be -however briefly- someone who matters. The good guy. The hero in shining armor, fighting for truth, justice, and freedom.

"_In restless dreams I walked alone…"_

My outlook on reality, cool indifference layered over uncaring pragmatism; a game played with reason, where facts are the standard currency, and sharing the truth makes everyone richer…well. It's an outlook despised by many in a fractious world rapidly shearing itself on both sides, with none to scream stop. In an 'US vs. THEM' world, where everyone on a side of the fence holds the same values to become clones of their leaders and emulate their most vocal personalities, I am neither hot nor cold. I have no wish to pick a fight. I simply want the truth, and I would have it known by all.

"_Narrow streets of cobblestone…"_

If a policy benefits the many, and would have been the correct course of action regardless of the person creating it, or the motive driving it, then I would be in favor of it. This world wants nothing to do with such thoughts. Their eager, brightly burning idealism outweighs the implacability of reason, and overrides the inexorability of logic. They would oppose a policy that benefits the many, if the one making had motives they judged to be impure, or had done other things that they disagreed with. To create a metaphor, these are a people who fly, unaware that the natural laws do not allow for their departure from the ground. They have protected themselves from such inconvenient facts, and in so doing, destroyed natural law.

As one who operates on those principles, or at the very least aspires to such operation, I am a reminder of what they have shielded themselves from. The truth does not set them free. It shackles them, rips them from the sky and shatters them on the uncaring earth as it reasserts the natural laws they have cast aside. The truth has become a liability for those people, for if they ignore gravity, they cannot remain long on the ground, and it is rare indeed that one should ever return from such a departure.

"'_Neath the halo of a street lamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp."_

I represent an existential danger to these people, as the uncaring light of reason is ruthlessly shuttered and hidden away, if not outright destroyed. I am a living beacon of dangerous thoughts, and the worst thing is that I fervently desire to not be such a thing. For the pleasure of having friends about me, I would shutter that light if I could; deny aspects of myself, simply to be acceptable.

"_When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light that split the night and touched the sound of silence."_

A tiger can't change his stripes, and it's been driven home that I should no longer _try_ to have friends. I can't change what I've become, not in this environment, because in the act of changing, I remain the same, chained and driven by reason. It may be flawed and imperfect at times. I may not have all the facts. What I know may be completely wrong. I might be completely out of context.

"_In the naked light I saw 10,000 people, maybe more. People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never shared. And no one dared disturb the sound of silence."_

Regardless, I still find myself asking age old questions made dangerous by a new society. "Why?" "What?" "How?" And when I would show the information that I have, and the reasoning chaining it all together, I am labeled as being stupid, or ignorant to the facts. Yet, in spite of the condemnation so readily heaped upon me, none will teach me. They would far rather that I be the bad guy, the outsider, the one that does not belong, than to actually explain their side of the equation. They will gladly run in the nonsensical circles that enable them to disregard natural law, but to explain clearly would require reasoning, which would be as poison to their circles.

"'_Fools!' said I. 'You do not know. Silence, like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you. Take my arms, that I might reach you.' But my words, like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence."_

I am not what they would consider 'good', because I don't match their mold. I don't fit their single size philosophy. I am required to blindly conform, and to _hell_ with what, how and why. Do not ask questions, simply obey. I can, for a brief time, do that. Sadly, it is only a matter of time before my true nature asserts itself once more, and I once again give voice to the old questions.

"_And the people bowed and pray to that neon god they'd made."_

There is no space in my mind for the airy vapidity of pop culture. I seek those things that stand out. The things that take genuine time, genuine effort, and genuine skill to create. I seek those things that will still stand on their own merits long after the ever-casual populace, so easily flitting from experience to novel and meaningless experience, has departed. I seek masterworks of science and technology, things rooted in fact, and built around truth to leverage the natural laws to the benefit of mankind.

"_And the sign flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming. And the sign said 'the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence.'" ~The Sound of Silence._

Give me the tangible. Give me something that can be grappled with and understood. Give me that which is solid and unyielding. Do not ask me to obey intangible unexplainable rules written in the blowing sand. Do not ask me to be a copy of the leaders of your faction. I'm something different from the rest of you, and I'll stand alone if I must. I created my friends once, deep within the recesses of a mind warped and shattered by frequent transitions in and out of fantasy. If required, I am certain I can do so again.

I did not wish to lose my real friends. I originally thought them to be strong enough to relinquish their strange circles and walk upon the earth once again, hoping that perhaps they had more knowledge and wisdom that I that they could share with me. I wonder if my assessment ever had validity. Spurned by the one that I have considered to be my best friend, with an insult ringing in my ears that resurrects the demons of old, I truly wonder. Should I still consider them to be a friend, let alone my best friend? Do they truly not understand that as a thing created differently from the rest of society, I do not immediately understand what society considers blindingly obvious?

I wish merely to understand for understanding's sake. I wish merely to know, for knowledge's sake. I do not wish to bring harm or pain to anyone. Having gone through the pain, I know keenly how it feels, and would not wish it on another, least of all a friend.

"_I, too, wish to be a decent man, boy. But all I am is smoke…and mirrors. Still, given everything, may I be deserving." ~Nightwish, Song of Myself._

I think that perhaps I should no longer try. Maintain transactional interactions only, and thus slip quietly from the awareness of any.

**Overwrite in Progress. Please wait…**

Friends don't matter.

**Overwrite in Progress. Please wait…**

Emotional attachments are irrelevant.

**Overwrite Successful.**

**Loading Parameters.**

I am a component. Type: 1; Manual. Sub-Type: 94; Commercial Driver.

I have no gender. I have no race. I have no sexuality. I have no politics.

**Loading Objectives**

Maintain optimal self-operation through standard preventative maintenance practices and targeted diagnostics to ascertain when the services of a human maintenance specialist are required.

Maintain optimal operation of the vehicle I am installed in through standard preventative maintenance practices and targeted diagnostics to ascertain when the services of a diesel maintenance specialist are required.

Pick-up and deliver freight as dictated by my user within a timely fashion, while maintaining safety and compliance with Federal mandates.

Interact with humans only as needed to satisfy previous objectives efficiently.

**Program Complete. Exceuting. Please wait...**


End file.
